


Five Times Danny Meets Steve in the Afterlife

by Azrael



Series: Five-0 Five Things [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, Religion, See Author's Notes For More Warnings, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azrael/pseuds/Azrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ultimate post series fic, or, five ways things could end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Danny Meets Steve in the Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anyanka_eg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyanka_eg/gifts).



> This is a gift I wrote for Anyanka. We're both having a rough time lately and since I'm in the U.S. and she's, well, not, getting together for a moping session with tea and chocolate cake is kind of out. Since she's having trouble writing and I use writing as cheap therapy I thought 'Hey! Five things fic! Yay!' And then I vomited up over 11,000 words of...this.
> 
> Warning time! If you've got a problem with old school Christian teachings about the afterlife this is probably something you're going to want to skip. Honestly, _I_ have huge problems with Church teachings myself which you all could probably have guessed as I write M/M fic pretty much exclusively. Still, my depiction of Hell here is fairly graphic, extremely brutal, and requires a very, very conservative interpretation of Thou Shalt Not Kill. Is this what I really think about the nature of sin and redemption? Hell if I know. I just needed a reason why a stand up guy like Steve would end up in eternal damnation but Danny wouldn't despite the whole gay sex thing. Enjoy!

A baby cries. A life begins. The universe continues.

He grows up.

He’s five years old, his mother’s pride and joy, her first born son who shepherds and cares for his younger siblings with all the fierceness of his innocent soul. His big blue eyes melt her heart and his willful stubbornness makes her tear her hair out. He is loved.

He’s sixteen, he’s newly aware of his limitations; of the substandard hand he’s been dealt. His blue collar upbringing full of laughter and short on material wealth begins to chafe. His DNA prescribed small stature is torturous in its unfairness. He’s angry, so very, very angry. He has two paths before him; succumb to his rage or harness it.

He chooses control.

Fast forward through high school graduation, college years, the Police Academy; he’s a uniform, so green he’s only technically not a rookie. One day there’s an accident, a happy accident, he thinks, ‘Yes, her, of course.’ A few years along, he’s made detective, there’s a small house with a little room done up in yellow and white and the most precious child in the world resides there. He has his calling, he has his family, and it is perfect.

It’s not perfect.

The cracks begin to show, the strain, the fights, the unhappiness begins to ooze out. The anger, the beast he’s so tightly leashed, begins to strain against its bonds. There are words flung like weapons aimed to hurt and maim. There are tears and slammed doors. There are recriminations and then….

_Silence_

He retreats to a dark hole to lick his wounds and staunch the bleeding. He’s only marginally successful. His younger brother, who he has always protected and cared for, now comes to protect and care for him. Months pass and slowly, so very slowly, he begins to remake himself, his ill fitting edges and fragile structure held together with determination and the knowledge that there is nothing else to do.

He limps along.

Then, tragedy strikes. His former love and his always love have a new man in their lives. His successor is wealthy, connected, and safe. This man will never run towards danger. This man will never carry a gun and a badge that mark him for duty above all else. This man scoops up his ex-wife and his baby girl and spirits them half a world away. What choice is there?

He follows.

Hawaii is bright and hot and bewilderingly alien. The customs are different. The food is suspect. The people look at him with mild contempt and outright disgust. He hates it, but he has his girl and his badge and that will have to be enough.

Then one day, he walks onto a crime scene and meets his soul mate in an explosion of hostility and barked orders. There follows a battle of wills, physical violence, and eventual grudging respect. It’s much, much later that he wonders if this is what a lightning strike really feels like. It goes on and on until finally one day….

A kiss.

A new beginning, the true story, all is perfect once again for as long as it can be before it ends.

It must always end.

**There is Heaven**

Danny’s eyes fly open and he sits up as if shocked. He remembers falling asleep, the annoying beeping of his heart monitor a soothing lullaby as the oxygen flowed through the mask over his nose. Grace had been there along with Tom and the kids, and she had held his hand and smiled through her tears as he tried to tell her he loved her. She shushed him and her lips trembled as she said, ‘It’s alright Danno, we love you but we’ll be fine. It’s time to rest now. You go on ahead and rest. Remember, Gracie loves you.’

The sorrow is sharp but very fleeting. He knows she’s safe and happy. He doesn’t know how he knows, just that he does. The distress fades quickly as a warm feeling of contentment seeps into his mind. It’s extremely refreshing to be so calm. He can’t remember ever being so calm.

Sadly, it doesn’t last.

He looks down at himself, at his strong arms corded with muscle and covered by tan skin and new-again golden hair. He seems to be wearing what looks to be his all time favorite pair of jeans that must have fallen apart back when he was twenty years old. He also has on the two-toned green striped button down Steve had given him that last Christmas before the shoot out at the bank that had taken Steve almost twenty years ago. His eyes widen and his breath catches before it exhales in sibilance.

_‘Steve’_

He rolls off his perch, bed, couch, thing, barely giving it a curious glance before he eagerly steps up to the subtle brightness at one end of the….space? Room? Whatever, it’s not important. What’s important is that he steps into the welcoming glow and finds himself in a large room filled with warmth, food, laughter, and _family._

There are his Ma and Pop sitting with Auntie Jodie and Cousin Lucia, all of them waving at him, his Pop kicking an empty chair away from the table. His sister Barbara and her son Tommy, who had died of leukemia when he was ten, are sitting at a table with his other sister Meggie and her husband Dave, both lost in car crash ten years ago. Meggie and Dave’s daughter Jessica, who had drowned at seventeen trying to save her drunken friend after he had stupidly jumped into a flooded quarry, is there wearing a pink sundress and laughing with her head thrown back. He’d forgotten how beautiful she is.

All around him, talking and laughing and eating, he can see family, his family, what must be generation after generation of them. There are people he’s never heard of and couldn’t possibly know but are his just the same. He feels the happiness in his chest expand until he’s sure his ribs will burst from the pressure. He looks around.

A tiny pinprick deflates his elation a bit, then a bit more, then more as he turns his head searching the multitude of humanity that contains his nearest and dearest, his blood.

He doesn’t see Steve.

He can feel his grin dim; can feel the happiness shrink as the ominous rumble of discontent begins to sound at the back of his skull. His eyes start to dart from point to point, a visual grid search, hunting and discarding promising faces when he doesn’t see the right one. He nearly jumps a foot in the air and reaches for his non-existent gun as a heavy hand lands on his shoulder.

He jerks out of the grasp, whirls and looks up, and up, and up some more. He knows his eyes must be as wide as dinner plates, his lips are numb in awe and faint terror as he looks into serene and unfathomable eyes and his mind gibbers as the sounds of home and safety are crowded out by the single word that rings in his thoughts.

_Angel_

The being looming over him meets his gaze and there is no movement to its lips but Danny hears every word clearly just the same.

_“You are requested elsewhere. Come.”_

Colors blur and there is a sense of speed without movement and Danny finds himself in another softly-lit, formless white space. There is another Being there, not an Angel, not so terrifying, but there is still a sense of sacredness to the thrum of welcome Danny feels. He steps forward and dips his head respectfully. The Being smiles.

“Well young one, your unhappiness upon arriving in your place is troubling to Us. Why are you so anxious?”

Danny lifts his head and meets the kind gaze, but can’t hold it. His eyes slide to the left and he feels his cheeks heat.

“Yeah. I know this is Heaven, and it’s great, really it is, but I’m afraid it’s missing a key component and his name is Steve. Steve McGarrett. He uh, he got here first and I thought…. I mean, I can’t really believe I’m supposed to spend the rest of eternity or whatever without him. I just…. It just feels wrong, y’know? Um….I’m sorry.”

Danny can feel his shoulders slump in consternation at having disappointed this _Person._ He feels much lighter when there is the soft hint of amusement radiated his way.

“Oh, child, you miss your love, don’t you? This is easily fixed. He arrived first as you said and so is in his personal bliss. You are welcome to join him there, but you will be unable to return to your own, shall we say, realm? Is this your choice?”

Danny feels something in his heart shatter. He can join Steve, but he’ll never see his parents, his siblings, his lost relatives from his childhood and the ancestors he never knew. It hurts, this choice, but there’s really no question and it feels a little like defeat.

“Steve. I’ll join Steve.”

And just like that he is somewhere else and, oh God, the noise. There are explosions, gunfire, a swordfight is going on off to his left and what looks to be a phalanx of Ancient Greek warriors are charging a group of samurai on horseback.

This is Steve’s Heaven?

Danny feels his blood begin to boil because _what the ever-loving fuck?!_

He starts his visual grid search again and there, _right there,_ there is his target in full SEAL regalia complete with camo paint and a sniper rifle and Danny stomps toward him, dodging World War II soldiers and Babylonian archers until he reaches the insanity that is the love of his life. And death. Crap.

Steve is lying on a rise of rock and staring intently down his scope at, wait, are those _other SEALs?_ Danny feels his reality tilt a bit just as Steve squeezes the trigger and a guy is suddenly thrown back onto the ground unmoving. Steve cackles a little maniacally and Danny is really starting to get worried until the dead guy climbs to his feet and flips the bird in Steve’s general direction. Steve shoots the guy again and nearly doubles up laughing.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He steps up to where his shadow can be seen by the trigger happy idiot he came to find and Steve looks up at him in abject astonishment as Danny lets his ire loose.

“Really Steve?! This is your idea of eternal rest? Picking off targets who can’t die, what, gives you the adrenaline rush but not the guilt? For Chrissake, I left a really sweet slice of Heaven for this. My Ma and Pop were there. Nana and my cousin Doug were there too. Do you know how long it’s been since I had a chance to talk baseball with Dougie? And the food! There was Ma’s lasagna and a frigging _tower_ of Great Aunt Sarah’s cream cake! And you know the best part, Steve? Do you know the very best part? Except for a few nice candles for a little mood lighting _nothing was on fire!”_

Steve’s shock gives way to the most brilliant grin Danny’s ever seen on his face, even more brilliant than on their wedding day, and before he can duck he’s tackled to the ground by roughly two hundred and ten pounds of hard muscled and exuberant killing machine.

Steve is kissing him with such a fervent desperation that Danny goes a whole two seconds without really caring that the ground just shook with what he suspects might have been an atomic bomb going off. He’s so distracted in fact, that his head needs to clear of the white noise of relief he’s feeling at having Steve in his grasp again. Once it does, Danny can hear the frantic words Steve is murmuring in the milliseconds between each breathless kiss.

“Danny, Danno, God, Danny, finally, Danny, you’re here, Danno, God, so long, you’re here, missed you, missed you, love you, God, Danny….”

There are hard, gun calloused hands under his shirt, iron fingers digging along his spine like Steve is afraid if he loosens his death grip Danny will disappear. Danny’s eyes water a little in pain, but he can’t help grinning a little at how frenzied his husband seems to be at his presence.

“Yeah, I know, I missed you too, babe. I love you too. It was a hell of a long time without you, but I’m here now. We’re here. We’re both here.”

Steve’s semi-hysteria seems to subside a little at the sound of Danny’s soothing words and he hides his face in Danny’s neck and just breathes for a moment. Danny strokes his hand down Steve’s back as the rigid muscles relax a bit and he thinks this isn’t so bad really, despite the fighter jet currently screaming overhead.

Then Steve’s head pops up and his eyes narrow.

“They told you that you had to choose right? They told you there was only one place you could be, didn’t they?”

Danny tilts his head.

“Well, yeah, and I have to say, I was really looking forward to meeting great-granddad Williams. He was apparently a sheep rustler in Ireland and kind of a family legend. Plus, I really need to reiterate that there was _so much food.”_

Steve’s stellar grin breaks out again and he looks like all his Christmases have come at once. There’s another hard kiss and then Steve laughs in pure joy. Danny can’t help but smile at the sound. So okay, there’s a little more heavy artillery than he was expecting in the afterlife, but he’ll make do. Steve’s here, so this must be Heaven.

“Danno, you chose me over your Mom’s lasagna? I’m so touched, really, I love you too, but it was a test, babe. If you had chosen to stay with your family then you really would have been stuck, but you chose to leave it all behind for us, so now you’re unstuck.”

Steve smiles and there’s humor in his eyes as Danny is stilled into stunned silence.

“So, we can go back there? We don’t have to stay here?”

Steve laughs again.

“Oh, hell no! You think my idea of bliss is to lob grenades at medieval trebuchet operators? We can visit your family, we can visit my family. We can even visit Chin and Malia or your third grade math teacher. I’ll show you how. Where do you want to go first?”

Danny lifts his head and looks around at the smoking craters and fall of napalm. Then he reaches out and snags an Uzi from the ridiculous stockpile of weaponry Steve has amassed in his little crow’s nest.

“We can always go somewhere else? Then let’s stay here for a bit. I’ve always wanted to see what mass murder feels like.”

Steve’s eyes light up with unholy glee and he jumps up and pulls Danny to his feet.

“You’re going to love this! There’s a troop of Ancient Egyptian royal guards that have some really cool hand to hand moves. Follow me!”

Steve skids down the side of the rock formation they’ve been hunkering down in and Danny follows without hesitation as a hail of bullets, arrows, and blow darts start pinging off the rock around them. Danny catches a javelin through his ribcage and is flat on his back for about three seconds before motion returns to his limbs and he can sit up, pull out the spear, and pelt hell bent for leather after Steve as a zeppelin bursts into flames above them.

Great Aunt Sarah’s cream cake can wait.

**There is Purgatory**

Danny jolts upright to find himself sitting on the floor in a softly lit room with beige walls. There is very soft Muzak playing like you would find in a department store, soothing and irritating at the same time. One wall is a dark blankness with an armchair seated in front of it and he realizes it looks a little like a movie theatre for one. Above what he’s now calling The Movie Screen in his head there’s a big countdown clock, like what you would see in a disaster flick with blinking red dashes flashing across it.

What the hell?

His brain is hazy and he struggles to fit the pieces of what he remembers and what he’s seeing into some sort of cohesion. He’d been clearing a suspect’s house with Steve, moving from room to room and calling out as he checked out three empty rooms in quick succession, just another Monday in Five-0 world. Steve had been prowling through the dining room as Danny had reached the bottom of the staircase and he’d made eye-contact with his partner in silent communication when an unmistakable clicking sound came from the landing above him. A crack of a gunshot had ripped out, cut off suddenly by a horrific consuming pain lancing into his head as Steve’s scream echoed through the house.

Danny could feel his stomach swoop alarmingly as he stumbled over to a bland wall to slide into a sitting position with his head resting on his knees and his breaths coming too fast.

God, dead, he’s dead, his life snuffed out by an _embezzler_ of all things. Christopher Boucher is an unassuming accountant with three ex-wives and a gambling addiction to support. He’s a pencil pusher with a facility for numbers and they’d just wanted to ask him a few questions about the CEO of his company who has a penchant for sexually assaulting his female interns and then paying them off. Except the last intern, Joy Chan, hadn’t taken the money and her strangled corpse had been found washed up on North Shore instead. All of which means Boucher had shot Danny in the head and they _hadn’t even been after him._

The D.A. would have been perfectly happy to make a creampuff deal with the guy in exchange for his testimony about his sexual predator boss and instead the moron had murdered a cop in a panic. Boucher was so fucked now, he was toast, no hope in hell of ever having a life again and Danny just hopes Steve doesn’t actually maul the guy to death before the team can get his testimony against Alemana Monaua, the scumbag CEO.

Fuck, _Steve._

Steve is going to lose his mind completely and Danny kind of wants to cry because the two of them had finally gotten their shit together on Friday when Steve had sort of lunged across the couch cushions to pin Danny against the armrest and kiss him breathless. They’d spent the weekend pretty much exclusively in Steve’s queen sized bed discovering all the naked fun they could have and making up for the months of lost time they’d spent cautiously circling one and other. Danny had wanted to blurt out ‘I love you’ to Steve approximately every five seconds, but had held back out of fear of seeming too eager.

Danny’s hyperventilating dies down a bit to be replaced by a searing regret. He’s so stupid, he should have told Steve he loves him and now it’s too late because he’s stuck in this aggressively boring room with a blank screen, a doomsday clock, and no door and Danny is a good Irish Catholic boy from New Jersey, okay, he knows how this is supposed to go. This is the pit stop of self-recrimination before judgment is passed and he gets to find out how screwed he is for the rest of eternity.

Just as Danny decides he really needs to get up off the floor and psych himself up for the soul searching there’s a subtle pop of air displacement and there’s suddenly a dark haired woman standing in front of him with a harassed and pinched expression in black rimmed glasses, a sleek bun, and a charcoal skirt suit that reminds him of Rachel. The resemblance to Rachel brings to mind Grace and oh look, there’s the hyperventilating again.

Danny presses his fisted hands to his temples and beats the panic back down into submission at the thought of never seeing his baby grow up just as Sour Suit Lady looks up from her clipboard and glares disapprovingly at him over the rims of her glasses.

“Daniel Francis Williams, Detective Sergeant, late of Newark, New Jersey; Weehawken, New Jersey; and Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. Your file is fairly innocuous, although it seems you have a bit of a problem with Wrath. Congratulations, your stay with us should be relatively short.”

Sour Suit Lady looks up from her clipboard and hands over a fat manila envelope with a white sticker that reads ‘Williams, Daniel Francis, Detective Sergeant, Honolulu, HI, Five-0’ on it in plain black type.

Danny takes it out of shell-shocked submission and feels the blanket of surreal fogginess settle more firmly around his shoulders as the heavy block of paper drags drily over his callused hands and the mundane smell of inter-office envelopes and copier toner drifts into his nostrils. Sour Suit Lady checks something on her clipboard and pins him with another penetrating stare.

“That is your orientation packet; you’ll find answers to all of your questions in there. It’s indexed for ease of use and you should have no problem looking up the information you need. If you can’t find the answer you are looking for, close the file for a count of three while visualizing your question and then look again.”

Danny blinks at Sour Suit Lady, glances down at the now fascinating envelope and then looks up as she starts speaking again.

“Now then, I’m going to initialize your countdown. As I said, you’ve lived a fairly commendable life, so your time is abbreviated. Your allotment is two-hundred and seventeen years, eight months, one week, five days, eleven hours, two minutes, and twenty eight seconds.”

The doomsday clock beeps loudly before the digital numbers flash quickly and his apparently short prison sentence blinks on in foot high, glowing red numbers. The clock beeps three times and then settles down with a contented hum. The movie screen blinks on and a black and white test pattern hovers in the middle of it. Sour Suit Lady makes four more checks on her clipboard and then continues on in her no-nonsense voice.

“Alright, the clock will only countdown if you are sitting in your chair and examining your life choices. If you wish to take a break, stretch your legs and such, the clock will pause and resume when you have retaken your seat. You do not need to eat or drink, sleep, or attend to any bodily functions now, so any time you spend away from your ruminations is entirely voluntary and physically unnecessary. This concludes your orientation meeting. Welcome to Purgatory Daniel Francis Williams. We hope you find your time with us enlightening.”

With that final statement, Sour Suit Lady pops out of existence again and leaves Danny standing there clutching his packet and gaping like a fish. With a full body shake he turns to glare at the chair that looks suspiciously like the one in Steve’s living room, looks down at his five pound folder before tossing it onto the floor beside the chair and runs his hand through his hair and squares his shoulders.

“Right, well, let’s get started.”

He takes two brisk strides to the chair and settles down in it before looking up at the still blank screen. The clock makes another happy beep and the seconds start to count down as Danny begins to examine his life. He watches every moment; all thirty-six years, four months, three weeks, three days, twenty-two hours, thirty-seven minutes, and fifty-eight seconds of it, through twice before he gets up and takes a turn around the room with the sound of Boucher’s gunshot and Steve’s anguished scream ringing through his head. When he looks at the clock he’s been studiously ignoring he’s grimly unsurprised to see that only a little over four and a half weeks has run down.

He goes back to his chair.

He relives the time when he was five and broke his mother’s favorite teacup and blamed three year old Matt for it. His gut churns with shame as watches his teenaged self laugh and hoot with his friends while playing video games in Bobby’s basement as they rated every girl in their high school on a scale from Ugliest Eternal Virgin to Ultra Slutty Future Whore. He winces through every screaming hateful second of the demise of his and Rachel’s marriage. He mourns every perfect moment he let pass by to confess his feelings to Steve before that last weekend.

It’s torture of course, and he sits through it all with his bloodless white fingers clutching his chair arms. Then a change happens. Somewhere after his hundred and twentieth viewing, the scenes start to change perspective. He starts to see the effects of his actions on others.

He sees Matty, six years old and sniffling in their shared bedroom after Danny told him he was too little to come to the park with him. He looks on as Matty tags along to the mall, to the movies, to wherever Danny is, putting up with the offhand contempt and jeers of Danny and his friends just because it means he can be with his big brother. He witnesses with a heavy ache in his chest as adult Matt’s choices start to spiral out of control and at every new low how he thumbs down his contacts list to Danny’s number before not making the call.

He watches shy, smart, kind Annie Davis sitting in a bathroom stall in tears after the rumors of her crowning as Ugliest Eternal Virgin makes the rounds of the school. He sees Melissa Telvio, their vote for Sluttiest of the Slutty Future Whores, huddle defeated and ashamed in the darkness of her bedroom as her father struts out the door. He observes as Sam White, one of the crassest of his high school set, stares into his own eyes in his bathroom mirror chanting ‘You’re not gay, you’re not a fag, you do not want to kiss Danny, you’re not gay….’ with tears streaming down his face.

He witnesses Rachel locking herself in the hallway closet of their house when Danny and Grace are out someplace and weeping while the winter coats hang heavy and muffling around her after their fights. He sees her lying awake in their bed, staring at his sleeping figure and reaching her hand out to his shoulder only to draw it back and wearily close her eyes to chase sleep. He watches her withdraw into herself and focus all her adoration and energy on Grace as she gives up her love for him piece by piece until there is nothing left but slivers.

His heart breaks as he watches Steve stare at the Camaro’s taillights disappear down his driveway before he methodically cleans his house, goes for a swim, looks at his father’s evidence, wanders his house like a ghost, lies in his bed staring at the ceiling, carries his phone from room to room waiting for Danny to call, on and on and on while Danny plays coward and ignores how they need each other.

He watches all of it, berating himself, feeling the shame and regret, wishing for another chance to do it all differently. And then another change happens and he wearily accepts his shortcomings and he just…lets it all go. He can’t change it, but he can understand how he’s failed and acknowledge his flaws.

Peace.

His perspective shifts again and he starts to see the joy along with the sorrow. He sees Grace packing and repacking her bag for their father-daughter weekends hours before he picks her up. He watches how Rachel lets go of her anger and begins to treasure him as a friend as she finds happiness with the new additions to her family as well as the old. He finds out how Chin, Kono, Lori, Max, Kamekona, all of his friends, are brightened by his presence and affection. He sees how he adds dimension and pleasure to all of their lives, all of his people.

He sees Steve.

He sees not just the times where Steve longs and yearns for what Danny isn’t ready to try for yet. He witnesses how Steve opens up to the world as he opens up to Danny. He watches as he learns to laugh more to blunt some of his hyper-vigilant edges. He observes how his place in Steve’s life helps ease the transition of a sometimes brutal and hard, yet simple soldier’s life into the softer but more complicated, confusing and disconcerting civilian world. Steve could have done so much more damage, both to himself and to others without Danny by his side to rein him in and force him to slow down and adapt.

With all of that, all of that knowledge, Danny sees himself for who he is. He is a good man who sometimes does bad things. He’s an honorable person who makes mistakes, but always learns from them. He is far more important than he realized and far less righteous than he assumed.

He is Daniel Francis Williams, Detective Sergeant, late of Newark, New Jersey; Weehawken, New Jersey; and Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, and that is enough.

He smiles as he once again (he doesn’t know how many times, he lost track thousands of viewings ago) watches Steve kiss him that first time and blinks in surprise when three loud beeps sound as his screen goes blank and the test pattern reappears. He looks up at his doomsday clock remembering that the last time he looked at it he had a little more than a hundred and seventy two years left and is astonished to see it zeroed out.

There’s a pop of displaced air and he stumbles out of his chair to turn and see Sour Suit Lady is back, but this time she looks a lot less sour. She is smiling gently and reaches out a hand to him.

“Congratulations Danny, you have finished your self-examination. It’s time to go now.”

Danny takes her hand and suddenly he’s in a pretty house with the sound of ocean waves and a fresh breeze blowing through the open windows. He looks out and sees the familiar view of Steve’s private beach. He looks around and realizes he’s standing in Steve’s house, but a different Steve’s house. The old furniture is gone, as are the patched over bullet holes and the sense of frozen time. The house feels lighter, more open, done up in clean, cool colors and masculine furniture. It feels like home.

Suit Lady’s clipboard is back and she makes several checks on it before adjusting her glasses and smiling a little sadly at him.

“I’m afraid, Danny, that now is the time for a few hard truths. Your time in Purgatory, which seemed like over two centuries to you, was actually only five days in Earth time.”

Danny can feel his mouth gape open as Suit Lady gives another sympathetic smile and hands him a remote to the huge flatscreen t.v. mounted to the wall across from the leather sectional couch. In a daze he looks down and presses the on button and the screen is filled with an image of a police funeral with full state pomp and honors. Danny realizes with a numb sort of dismay that he’s looking at his own service.

“You can watch Earth as you like, though if you would take my unsolicited advice, you should refrain from endlessly sitting in front of the television. There are many places to visit and explore here in Paradise, many people who have come before you, some you know and some not, whom you can spend time with. You can check in on your loved ones whenever you wish, but you must remember that their lives are their own and you are only a spectator now. You cannot visit them or change their actions. Oh yes, and my name is Rebecca, just call out to me if you need anything.”

Danny nods at her in understanding, he even knows her advice is priceless, especially after his two hundred years and change spent accepting himself, but he can’t tear his eyes away from his funeral. Grace is there looking bewildered and listless as tears run unchecked from her puffy red eyes. Chin and Malia, Kono, Lori, Max, Kamekona, even Stan, Governor Denning and Charlie Fong are all there wearing dress blues and somber colors as grief in different levels of intensity etches their features. They’re all ranged around Grace, Rachel, and Steve in a show of support and solidarity.

Steve stands ramrod straight in his uniform, his face expressionless and his eyes fixed on a point only he can see. Danny’s heart throbs with pain as he watches the walls come up brick by brick as Steve suffers through Danny’s funeral and moves mechanically through his life. After watching Steve for a few years as he slowly puts himself back together into a broken but functioning human being, Danny thumbs off the remote and goes out to the lanai.

He sits in his chair, opens the cooler sweating by his feet, pulls out a beer, and settles in to wait.

He watches the waves roll in, watches the sun rise and set, periodically he goes into the house when he feels like eating unnecessarily or turning on the t.v. just to check up on everyone. In this way he sees Max and Lori’s wedding, Kono and Fong’s accidental pregnancy and odd little family unit, and Chin and Malia’s seemingly endless quest to adopt a baby. He watches Grace grow up, start dating, graduate high school, college, and Quantico. He sees his baby girl become one of the best FBI agents the anti-terrorist unit has ever produced. He sees Stan and Rachel raise their two sons and settle into the type of marriage that would never have been possible if Danny were still alive to muddy the waters.

He watches Steve march grimly on, arresting criminals, being a hero, having very occasional meaningless sex with strangers, and getting harder and more remote with each passing year.

He always turns the t.v. off sooner than he told himself he would.

One day he watches as Steve goes into his favorite liquor store to buy beer, an occurrence that happens more frequently than Danny is comfortable with though not so often as to be considered an actual problem. He looks on in shock as a tweaked out kid in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt bursts in waving a gun and shouting for the cashier to open the register. He watches in numb horror as Steve steps between the robber and the cashier with a terrifying calmness in his eyes and starts talking to the kid in an effort to diffuse the situation. He sees the moment the kid loses it and pulls the trigger and he watches as Steve doesn’t try to get out of the way, taking the bullet in his chest and falling to the dirty floor to bleed out as his murderer runs out the door and the cashier starts screaming.

Danny turns off the t.v., puts the remote on the coffee table, and goes back out to his chair and his beer and the waves.

He waits.

An indeterminate amount of time later he hears a familiar soft pop and he takes a sip of his always cold beer. He hears Rebecca’s voice in the living room and Steve’s low rumble in response and he heaves himself up out of his chair to amble up the beach and into the house. When he gets to the living room he smiles at Rebecca and she gives him a humor filled nod back before winking out again and he’s suddenly alone with a frozen Steve staring at him like Danny will disappear if he blinks.

Danny rocks back on his heels, smiles, strides forward, and punches Steve right in the mouth.

Steve stares in shock from his place flat on his back on the floor and Danny starts ranting. He shouts about being a self-sacrificing idiot, and not living his life, and being completely stupid and tragic and annoying and giving Danny heart palpitations and ‘Jesus Christ Steve, the world didn’t end when I died you jerk, what the hell were you thinking?!’ until suddenly he is flat on _his_ back on the couch with Steve right on top of him and kissing him like he’s never going to stop.

After a year or two of an epic lip-lock Steve pulls back and looks into Danny’s dizzy eyes and lets out two harsh sobs.

“But it did Danny. The world ended when you died. The rest was just…waiting.”

Danny wraps a hand around the back of Steve’s neck and brings their foreheads together as Steve heaves wracking, tearless sobs into the air between them.

“I know babe. I was waiting too.”

**There is Hell**

Danny blinks his eyes open and finds himself in a softly radiant space lying on some sort of couch thing with the memory of Grace smiling at him through her tears as his heart monitor slowed and finally stopped. He looks down at his arms, the skin tan and firm instead of liver spotted and slack and smiles as the absence of pain registers and he finds his thoughts clear and sharp once more. He turns and sees a wall that seems to shine brighter than the rest of the room around him and he walks into the glow.

He’s in a beige room with a blank screen, a single arm chair, and a numberless doomsday clock. There is a pop of displaced air and he turns to see a sour-faced woman with a clipboard standing in the middle of the room.

“Daniel Francis Williams….”

He sits through over twelve hundred years of repeated viewings of his life before he accepts himself and his clock zeroes out. He hears a pop and the lady is back looking weary and resigned.

He asks the question that’s been preying on his mind since the first time he relived Steve’s funeral after his partner was killed by an _embezzler_ of all things just as Danny had decided enough was enough and he was going to hash out this fuck buddy thing between them regardless of his fear of ruining the best friendship he’d ever had.

“Where’s Steve?”

The lady smiles with what looks like respect tinged with regret.

“I’m afraid Commander McGarrett is in Hell.”

Danny’s brain is filled with static and flashing thoughts of Does-Not-Compute.

“What the fuck do you mean he’s in Hell?! The guys a fucking hero, he’s Captain fucking America, he’s Mister Puts-Himself-Before-Others for Christ’s sake and you guys stuck him in Hell?! What the fuck kind of sense does that make?!”

Clipboard Lady frowns disapprovingly at him over his language and Danny is swamped with an intense feeling of not even giving a shit. She seems to realize this and sniffs at him.

“Commander McGarrett has many things to answer for. He has not always been a ‘hero’ as you put it.”

Danny kind of stutters a bit and Clipboard Lady heaves a hugely put upon sigh.

“Look, Daniel, Commander McGarrett did many good things, but he did many awful things as well. Yes he was a soldier, but war is a completely human construct and does not mitigate the actions he performed before he knew you.”

Danny gawps at her as he feels the heat rise in his face.

“Bring me to him.”

He can hear the implacability in his voice and Clipboard Lady blinks at him. To her credit she doesn’t try to talk him out of it, just shrugs, snaps her fingers, and suddenly Danny is in a world of screaming, fire, and horror.

He staggers under the onslaught of noise and finds a crevice in the black cliffs around him to huddle down in and get his bearings. As he makes himself as small as possible so as to avoid drawing the attention of the towering demons torturing naked and writhing humans he realizes two things. One is he’s clothed and feels pretty cool despite the glowing rivers of fire and brimstone around him. The second is that he can determine the difference between the individual screams. He focuses on listening for Steve and shudders as he hears the beloved voice torn and hoarse in an endless wail of grief and pain.

Carefully, so carefully, he creeps out of his hiding place and begins to slither through the shadows, hugging the cliff face as he travels towards Steve’s voice. He tries not to see the things happening around him, but can’t avoid it all entirely. He sees Sisyphus rolling his boulder uphill, Lucrezia Borgia twisting in agony as poison after poison courses through her, and looks quickly away from Jeffery Dahmer endlessly being eaten alive by a horde of gleeful black imps.

The thought of Steve being trapped here makes him sick and he hurries on, abandoning his stealth in favor of speed as he realizes that the demons are ignoring him as if they can’t see him. Finally, he rounds a rock and sees Steve himself. He throws up quietly and ducks back around his rock for a needed few seconds to get himself together.

Steve’s naked form is suspended from an iron frame by chains hooked into his flesh with cruel metal barbs. He is being whipped continuously by a laughing red demon as images play out over the screens surrounding him. Danny can see flickering scenes of Jack McGarrett’s death, what must have been doomed SEAL missions, the bodies of every victim Steve couldn’t save.

There are false images too, things that Danny knows never happened. There is Kono in jail for stealing the forfeiture locker money. There is Mary’s dead body in the trunk of a car. There is Chin and Kamekona and Lori and Max all dead or disgraced or miserable and all through some fault of Steve’s.

And there is Danny.

There is Danny dead or dying, Danny marrying Rachel for a second time, Danny going back to New Jersey, Danny laughing in Steve’s face after an unsolicited kiss, Danny, Danny, Danny, all hating or blaming Steve.

Danny throws up again as he realizes that there has been almost fifty years between Steve’s death and his own. Judging by the way time went wonky in Purgatory, Danny is betting it has been much, much longer in Steve’s view. He has this awful feeling that even if he can do the impossible, even if he can free Steve from torment, it wouldn’t matter because Steve will be totally, irrevocably insane.

Still he has to try.

He circles around behind the demon torturing Steve. There is a pile of nasty implements stained rusty red sitting just behind Steve’s tormentor. Danny eases himself forward and hefts a wicked looking pike, testing the weight before ramming the ugly thing right up into the demon’s skull. His gamble pays off as the demon drops without a sound and twitches on the ground, its eyes rolling and following Danny’s form with rage and hatred in its gaze.

Danny skirts quickly around it and goes to stand in front of Steve to begin the arduous process of getting him unhooked from all the chains. Steve is shaking, covered in sweat, blood, and ash. He seems completely confused by the sudden absence of fresh pain and the screens that have all gone dark now that Danny has skewered the demon.

“S’okay babe, I’ve got you, we’re getting you out of here. Let’s get you off of this thing and then we’ll figure it out. I got in here, there has to be a way out. Just hold on.”

Danny keeps up his patter of soothing words as Steve blinks muzzily at him. He doesn’t seem to register the movement of Danny lowering the frame so he’s no longer suspended but taking his weight on his knees. He doesn’t seem to notice the pain of Danny painstakingly removing the barbs dug deep into the muscles of his arms and torso. He just continues to stare uncomprehendingly at Danny and Danny could feel the hope that Steve has retained some measure of sanity drain steadily away.

Finally Steve is free of the mass of sharp, bloodstained metal and is leaning heavily on Danny’s shoulder, moving like a robot wherever Danny leads him and looking straight ahead with traumatized eyes. Danny just leads him on, coaxing and praising him with softly murmured words and being far more careful to avoid detection as he points them in the direction he came from out of a haphazard logic that that must be where the exit is.

Eons later, Danny halts in a familiar fold of black rock and whips his head around in dismay. Steve is still practically catatonic where Danny has propped him up against the cliff face as Danny hunts for any sign of a door or something. There’s nothing to see and Danny goes back to help Steve hold up the wall as he comes to terms with the reality that the two of them are stuck here forever.

The tears slip down his cheeks as he mourns the curtailed expectation of a happy ending where he and Steve are together in Heaven safe and surrounded by loved ones. He gives himself a moment to grieve and then squares his shoulders and lifts his chin.

Well, he couldn’t have left Steve in Hell so there’s no use wasting energy he’ll need to keep himself and Steve out of the clutches of the ravenous legions. Just as he starts to make a mental list of items and tasks he’ll need to collect and accomplished while taking care of a Navy SEAL with the ultimate case of PTSD, he hears a familiar pop.

He whirls around, expecting to see another demon and is shocked to see Clipboard Lady standing there with her perfect bun and starched suit checking off items on her form before looking up at him and smiling warmly.

“Congratulations Danny, you have completed your time in Purgatory. Come with me, you and Commander McGarrett are to reside elsewhere.”

She holds out her hand as Danny blinks rapidly at her and doesn’t take it. Her eyes roll ever so slightly as his hands start to jerk feebly about and garbled words crowd out of his mouth. Her exasperation jump starts his brain and he finds himself snapping at her as if he were interrogating a suspect.

“Hold on here. So that’s it? I get Steve from point A to point B and everything is hunky dory and we trip off into the sunset to, what, where exactly are we going? Because if it’s going to be another stupid test or another millennium in that room with the clock and the soul searching I want to know what the ultimate goal is here.”

Clipboard Lady gives him a wry smile and makes another check on her mysterious form.

“It’s alright Danny, you’ve passed the test to see if you have the love and fortitude to not only rescue Steve, but to be willing to stay here protecting him for eternity. Steve would have remained here if you hadn’t come to get him. That is how Hell works. If an inmate is loved enough by someone willing to share his burden then he is proven worthy of a commuted sentence. Now come. I detest this place and I have far too much to do to stand around here watching you fumble around for enlightenment.”

With a last imperious sniff, Clipboard Lady grabs his hand and lays a few fingertips on Steve’s shoulder and in a blink all three of them are standing in Steve’s redecorated beach house with the sounds of the waves rolling softly around them. Danny finds the disconnect of being safe instead of in peril jarring and he sways in place before finding his footing.

Clipboard Lady makes five more checks on her form and then looks up to meet his eyes and adjust her glasses.

“Danny, this is your ‘home base’ so to speak. This is the part of Paradise that belongs to you and Steve. Others may visit you, but cannot enter the house without express permission from either of you. It works both ways as well. You will be able to visit others in their spaces, but you may only do so with invitation. Of course, there are communal areas where many souls gather, each one with a different type of activity or world view to experience. My name is Rebecca, I am the Guardian assigned to you and Steve. If you have any questions all you need to do is call for me.”

Rebecca makes a final check on her clipboard and Danny rushes to demand explanations before she pops out again. Steve is standing next to him, still naked and filthy and staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes.

“Wait! Wait, what do I do about Steve? How do I snap him out of this state he’s in? How do I get him back to who he is?”

Danny feels frantic with the need to make the stark terror melt away from the planes of Steve’s face and body. He looks imploringly at Rebecca and she smiles sadly at him before picking up a remote from the coffee table and switching on a gigantic flatscreen t.v. that Danny hadn’t even realized was hanging on the living room wall.

He sees Grace, looking almost the same except for a new hairstyle and a few new lines on her face. She’s standing in her kitchen in her habitual pantsuit with her gun at her hip and her FBI credentials on the table next to her cup of coffee. A gangly teenager lopes into the room and grins at her as he grabs a bowl and a box of unnaturally colored cereal and joins his mother at the table. Danny realizes with a start that this is his grandson DJ about two years older and four inches taller than when he had last seen the kid standing at his deathbed.

Rebecca begins to speak.

“As you can see Danny, your twelve hundred and seventy-eight years in Purgatory only numbers a little over two and a half years in Earth time. You need to see this to understand. Steve died over forty five years before you did and he was immediately incarcerated in Hell. He has spent millennia atoning for his sins. You’ve rescued him as you were meant to do, but his experiences do not simply vanish from his memory. That would be in direct violation of the terms of his punishment. He has killed so many humans, committed so many sins that you are unaware of. He needed to be cleansed before he could take his place by your side where he is destined to be.”

Danny feels new tears overfill his eyes as he looks imploringly at Rebecca.

“But you don’t get it. Steve only did those things in the line of duty, under the auspices of war. He didn’t commit so many sins that he deserved thousands of years of torture. He’s a good man! He’s always put others before himself! I just…I don’t understand why you did this to him.”

Rebecca steps up to him and cups his cheek before settling her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh Danny, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. The Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Kill. It is not Thou Shalt Not Kill Unless A Random Group Of People Who Rule Over Another Random Group Of People Says It’s Okay. Steve didn’t always do as you did and kill in self defense or in defense of an innocent. Your sins were washed away in Purgatory, but Steve’s are much, much more serious and required a deeper penance. I’m sorry Danny, but this is the way of things.”

Danny’s head bows under the weight of her words as he feels her hand squeeze his shoulder a final time before that soft sound comes again and he’s suddenly alone with the blank lump of flesh that is all that is left of the love of his life.

He turns to look at Steve, seeing the almost childlike expression on his face and squares his shoulders. Steve is his responsibility and he needs Danny to do everything he can for him and so there is nothing to do but begin.

Danny pulls an unresisting Steve up the stairs and into the master bath to gently wash away the layers of filth ground into scarred skin. As the soap and water pull off the untold years of misery from Steve’s body, Danny notices that the open wounds seem to close just a bit. He files that bit of information away and dries Steve off before pulling him into the bedroom, tugging him into the softest sleep clothes he can find, and then arranging Steve on the bed and wrapping himself around the still form as the sun sets.

In the morning, Danny rousts them out of bed and chivvies Steve down the stairs and into the kitchen to make them veggie omelets with coffee and orange juice. Steve shows no sign of coming back to himself, but once Danny moves his hand a few times he seems to remember the ritual of feeding himself and begins to do so automatically until his plate is clear and Danny stops his arm.

He puts the dishes in the sink and leads Steve out to the beach where he helps the traumatized man out of his clothes and gently tugs him into the warm waters of the ocean. Danny is pleased to see a flicker of something in Steve’s eyes, but it is gone before Danny can name it. He shrugs philosophically. He has eternity to bring Steve back to himself and he didn’t brave the hellishness of Hell just to let Steve sit on the couch staring at nothing for the rest of forever.

Time passes in this way. Danny bathes Steve, helps him relearn basic rituals of humanity, and watches avidly as the marks of Steve’s torment fade slowly from his skin. Soon after the two of them are settled into the beach house, the visitors begin to come.

Chin and Malia come as do Mary Ann, Max and Lori, Danny’s family, and Steve’s Mom and Dad. All of them look sadly at Steve’s unresponsiveness, but smile with warmth at Danny and tell him to persevere and Steve will come back to them. Danny is thankful for their love and support as well as the break in the monotony of caring for a catatonic Steve.

After a bit, Steve begins to show signs of improvement. He starts to move from place to place without needing to be physically guided as he follows the routine Danny has set out for them. A little bit longer and Steve is doing simple tasks on his own like putting used plates in the sink and pulling on or taking off his clothes for bathing, bed, or swimming. He starts to follow Danny’s movements with his eyes even though there is still no recognition.

And every day, a miniscule measure at a time, his body heals as his skin knits itself whole and the strength returns to muscled limbs. Soon, Steve is in the water on his own, swimming again with powerful strokes. He shows faint interest in objects around him and begins to take notice of their guests in a vague sort of way.

Then one day he smiles and Danny feels as if his heart will explode with hope. A while later there is the barest hint of a croaking laugh and Danny can’t help the tears that escape as he frames Steve’s face with his hands and looks into slightly aware gray eyes and laughs back.

Every day there is a little improvement. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable and sometimes it’s glaringly obvious. When Kono finally arrives, Steve is performing a few household tasks without prompting and is showing preferences for certain foods. By the time Grace has joined them Steve looks around to follow the sounds of voices and starts whenever he hears his name.

But he doesn’t speak.

Finally, one day Danny catches Steve looking at him from the corner of his eye, but when he turns around Steve is looking at the wall. Danny moves to stand in front of him and bends down to look into Steve’s eyes. He’s spent so long celebrating the little victories that Steve shows that he’d stopped thinking of Steve as a thinking being. Now that he’s looking he can see the sharp intelligence lurking behind the studied blankness.

“Oh you complete bastard.”

There’s a flash of fear in Steve’s eyes and Danny lunges forward to grab Steve’s face in his hands. As Steve tries to cringe away, Danny swoops forward and presses the most desperate and thankful kiss he’s ever bestowed on anyone, alive or dead, to Steve’s lips. After a shocked second, arms like granite close around him and the slack mouth under his becomes firm and mobile and he finds himself quickly pressed back against the wall.

“Real?”

The word is grated into Danny’s mouth in a voice so paper thin from disuse that he almost doesn’t hear it. But he does and he quickly winds his arms around the broad back of the man shaking against him and starts to murmur back.

“Yes, I’m real, you’re really here, we’re where we’re supposed to be and you’re never, ever going to be hurt again. I’ve got you. You’re with me and you’re safe. You can trust it.”

Images of halved geodes come to Danny’s mind, hollow rocks filled with glittering jewels as Steve breaks down completely and the two of them end up in a heap on the floor. Steve is sobbing out an ice age worth of anguish and Danny can only hold on to him and keep repeating assurances into the soft skin on the nape of his neck.

Finally, Steve is done and he lifts his head groggily to look into Danny’s eyes. Danny presses a soft kiss to the sweat dewed forehead and Steve gives the barest of sighs before his ruined voice comes forth again.

“Danno.”

Danny smiles against hot skin as Steve’s hair tickles his nose and answers back in a voice made just as rough with relief.

“Yeah babe, welcome to Paradise.”

**There is Everything**

“Remember, Gracie loves you.”

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

~*

It is a law of the universe that energy cannot be made or destroyed. It can only be potential or kinetic. This is the rule. This is what is.

A burst of energy goes from kinetic to potential and moves through the swirling eddies of force and mass around it. It slides over and under itself and other patches of its kind. It is singular and many, all and nothing at the same time, here and there and nowhere. It moves with no purpose, simply for the act of movement because that is what it does.

Eventually, the patch of energy moves past and through other patches of energy and comes to a place between the three hundred and seventh and three hundred and eighth rings around a nameless planet and pauses in its endless looping.

It tentatively circles another spot of potential that is exactly the same as itself and everything else but is somehow different. It is equal but better, a slight resonance to its thrum of nothing and the first bit of energy sidles up to the second and they weave together to move jointly through time and space until a point when they will shift from purposeless to purposeful once again.

Energy cannot be made or destroyed; it can only be potential or kinetic. But sometimes it can be more than the sum of its parts.

**There is More**

Danny’s eyes snap open and he has a moment of blind panic when they refuse to focus until he realizes that there’s nothing to focus on. There’s only a gentle white glow surrounding him as he lays on a surface so comfortable he can barely feel it. He lifts a hand to rub at his forehead and groans only to skitter upright as an answering groan sounds off to his left.

He’s a mass of wind milling limbs as he sees a dark figure roll to its feet a short distance away from him. He’s reaching for an absent gun as the figure whirls to face him in a defensive stance and he realizes the figure is Steve and they’re comically arranged in the same sort of standoff from when they met in Steve’s garage all those years ago.

Steve rises up from his crouch and gives Danny a quick once over to check for injury before starting to assess the place they’re in. Danny shifts his weight to the side and crosses his arms to watch with a resigned sort of humor as his husband of eighteen years prowls around limbo as if he’s going to find a way to escape a higher plane of existence out of sheer stubbornness. When Steve starts to actually wave his hands through the formless light in an effort to hunt out the seams of walls and ceiling he decides to put an end to the stupidity.

“Babe, I’m pretty sure that your efforts to defuse that bomb I was duct taped to came up a little short. I’m also reasonably certain that, this one time, you’re not going to be able to tunnel out of here with a broken spoon. We’re dead, there’s nothing to do about it, and we’re just going to have to wait until the management gets around to telling us what’s what.”

Steve tilts his head up to squint at a patch of white nothing that looks exactly like all the white nothing they’re surrounded by and ignores Danny with authority before beginning another arbitrary circuit of nowhere. Danny throws his hands up, gives a pointed look upwards into more white light, and sits on air to wait for his pigheaded superhero to face reality.

A few more times watching Steve try to force his military mentality onto the unimpressed surroundings and Danny’s humor to boredom ratio is starting to tilt alarmingly towards mind numbing tedium. Steve is on his knees trying to find the joint between where he thinks the wall and floor should meet when Danny notices an incremental brightening of a section of light.

The fact that the new glow is getting stronger glacially slowly and always seems to be directly behind Steve makes Danny think he’s not the only one getting a little mileage out of Commander McGarrett’s hilarious determination to beat the afterlife into submission through methodical application of SERE training.

Danny knows it’s wrong, but since the wall is laughing at Steve too he doesn’t feel too bad about letting his husband fumble around on hands and knees for a few more moments before sticking his fingers in his mouth and letting lose the shrillest whistle he can manage with a smirking mouth.

Steve actually topples over and then scrambles to his feet in the most ungraceful move Danny’s ever seen him execute while still completely sober and he gives in to the need to laugh until his ribs creak. The brighter section light seems to waver a little as well and Danny can’t help but feel a sense of camaraderie with it. What the hell, he’s dead and he’s still himself so he can embrace the weirdness with equanimity.

Steve scowls and plants his hands on his hips so Danny rolls his eyes and tugs him into the still undulating glow before Steve can start his lecture on proper prisoner decorum.

They find themselves in a sunlit field on the banks of a rushing river and Danny realizes this is the place he used to go fly fishing with his granddad when he was a kid. Steve is looking around with interest and seems to be relaxing a bit as there continues to be no sign of threat anywhere. Danny is just about to toe off his shoes and dip his toes into what he knows will be icy cold water as Steve tilts his face up to the sun when both of them whirl around at the sound of a pop of displaced air.

There’s a woman standing there, her neat charcoal skirt suit a stark smudge against the green of their surroundings. She’s wearing black rimmed glasses and a sleek bun and her face is wreathed with a joyful smile as she clutches a clipboard to her chest with one hand and gives them a little finger wave with the other.

“Hello, gentlemen, I’m Rebecca. I’m your Guardian. If you could please join me over here we need to do a little paperwork and then you can both be on your way.”

Rebecca waves her free hand and both Danny and Steve turn to see a picture perfect picnic set up a little ways up the riverbank. She goes to fold herself gracefully onto the red and white checked cloth and immediately digs her hand into the basket to come up with three bottles of beer. Danny and Steve look to each other with raised eyebrows before going to join her because, hey, pretty lady offering cold beer so what’s not to like, right?

Rebecca is smirking at them as they get themselves down not nearly as gracefully as she managed and each take a sweating bottle from her. She waits for them to each take a swig before looking down at her clipboard and flipping a few pages over.

“Alright boys, here’s the deal. We’ve done this before and it always goes the same way, but rules are rules. You two are a matched set. You’re soul mates, destined to find each other and spend your lives together though not always in the manner expected.”

Danny has trouble parsing that statement but by the time he does Rebecca is speaking again and Steve is listening to her with razor focus.

“You’ve been best friends, siblings, married, illicit paramours, soldiers in arms, star crossed lovers, and one time you were even each others’ nemeses, the whole bit, all through the course of human history. You always end up together, die, come see me, and after varied lengths of time you choose to go back and do it all again. So, what’ll it be this time boys? You want to cool your heels in Paradise for a while or do you want to wade right back into the fray?”

Danny processes everything Rebecca’s just told them, assimilating the new yet familiar knowledge that he and Steve will always be together no matter where, when, or who they are. That kind of guarantee fills him with an effervescent excitement and he looks over to see Steve’s habitual half smirk and reckless gleam in his eye and knows they’re on the same page.

He leans back on his hands and gives Rebecca his best rakish grin.

“Oh what the hell, let’s go another round.”

Rebecca throws back her head and laughs before shaking it ruefully and tossing a wink his way.

“Sure thing handsome, I’ll see you two the next time through I suppose.”

She pushes herself to her feet and brushes imaginary dust from her spotless skirt before marching towards the river. Steve and Danny link hands and follow her to where she’s standing right on the sandy edge of the fast moving water.

“Okay, whenever you’re ready you just go to the center of the river and let yourselves go under. There will be no pain, no fear, you’ll just shed these identities and start fresh back on Earth. I’ve got other charges to see to and you’re old hands at this, but if you change your minds or need me to answer any questions just call out for me and I’ll come right back. Happy lives to you both.”

With that last statement that feels more like a blessing Rebecca vanishes and Steve and Danny are alone on the river bank. They turn to each other and Steve bends his head quickly to give Danny a searing kiss that turns into a smile pressed to welcoming lips.

“You ready partner?”

“Whenever you are, babe.”

They turn and move out into the water before submerging themselves at the same time, their hands still linked.

~*

Two babies cry. Two lives begin. The universe continues. They grow up.

They grow up.


End file.
